Adam Ahuja looks down at his keyboard. It contains a universe of sounds. Mini drum-pads are flanked to the right. A microphone is set straight in front of the rig. Above sits a multi-track live-loop recorder - a canvas ready to capture and replay anything that’s performed live. All of the music will be created from scratch, right here, right now…
Drawing influence from the spheres of jazz, rock, funk, soul, hip-hop, electronic, world, and some Vanilla Ice dance partying at age six, NYC-based live-looping artist and keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Adam Ahuja melds a love for groove with an obsession with harmony, flavoring compositions with metaphysically-bent singing and rhymes.
But flowing between keys, drums, bass, guitar, percussion, and vocals isn’t always a purely solo venture. Quintessential to an Ahuja performance is sharing the creative wealth via radical collaboration. Audience members, whether musicians or not, are often invited onstage to offer their own creative expressions, where their contributions are recorded into Ahuja's live-looping gear, creating new “intheloop” music together in the moment. Such collab-creations have been enjoyed at venues such as Relix Magazine Headquarters, Sofar Sounds locations across three continents, and virtually as well. As Goldmine Magazine puts it, Ahuja “breathes new life into the one-man-band concept.”
Ahuja’s career path has metamorphosed: from pre-med and strategic consulting, to keyboard-freelancing the streets of NYC, to musical collaboration with artists such as Meatloaf in the studio and Robert Randolph on the road, to ultimately honing his solo craftwork, landing artist features in Spotify’s New Music Friday and at Blue Note Jazz Club, NYC. Ahuja is also an active collaborator with like-minded colleagues, regularly releasing “x-genre” joint-works on his own label, Infinity Gritty. Along each step of the journey, Ahuja reminds himself to heed the inspiration from late mentor and former Blue Note Records CEO, Bruce Lundvall: never stop listening.
